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Press Release

James Graham & Sons is pleased to present recent paintings by Nancy Lorenz in an exhibition that mark's the artist's third solo exhibition with the gallery. The show will take place at 32 East 67th Street, with an opening reception on Tuesday, October 7th, from 6 to 8 pm. The show will be on exhibit from October 7th through November 8th. A catalog with an essay by John Zinsser will be available.

Known for her lustrous panel paintings, Nancy Lorenz's work combines modes of Western modernism with traditional Asian methods and motifs. Lorenz uses inlay and lacquer techniques – embedding mother of pearl and abalone shell in polished layers of pigment and shellac on panel – to create geometric and abstract compositions. As John Zinsser writes in the catalog essay, "Sometimes, she begins with an art historical allusion, as with her take on Bridget Riley's Op paintings of the 1960s. In Lorenz's translation, the undulating curved motifs of the original have been re-made as mother of pearl inlay, imbedded in an all-over field of silver-leaf, finally treated with a stippling black Sumi ink wash."

Lorenz's compositions explore geometry – a mathematical discipline which is simultaneously concrete and abstract. Her exploration is apparent in her interpretations of works by the German artists Joseph Albers and Wolfgang Ludwig as well as her compositions which explore Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. Some of the works in this show feature icons of modernist architecture flattened to pictorial templates as for instance Le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp or Giuseppi Terragni's Casa del Fascio. Her renderings of these architectural archetypes give over to our age's fixation with image inventorying. Modernism, it seems, has become imbedded in us. For Lorenz, it's a psychological condition to be reflected against.

Nancy Lorenz was born in the United States. She attended high school in Japan and received her MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Rome. Her training included an apprenticeship with an Asian antique restorer in New York. Lorenz has received numerous large-scale commissions by architects and designers, including Peter Marino, Thomas O'Brien, Bill Sofield and the Rockwell Group. Recent completed commissions include murals for the dining room of Adour, Alain Ducasse's new restaurant at the St. Regis.

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